For the uninitiated, per Wikipedia “DEF CON” (also written as DEFCON or Defcon) is one of the world’s largest annual hacker conventions, held every year in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first DEF CON took place in June 1993.

Many of the attendees at DEFCON include computer security professionals, journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, crackers, cyber-criminals, security researchers, and hackers with a general interest in computer code, computer architecture, phone phreaking, hardware modification, and anything else that can be “hacked”.”

This year’s DEFCON expected 10,000 registrants. That’s a lot of hackers! One interesting tidbit about DEFCON is you can’t pre-register, as in give them your credit card ahead of time to book your spot because DEFCON only accepts cash! And for good reason! What most people don’t realize is not all hackers are bad. Certainly “crackers and cyber criminals” are bad, but many hackers are full time security professionals and work around the clock to create the security software to protect us.

If you have someone local that does computer security or as it’s known in the industry “penetration testing” they will lock down your network and protect you from the “crackers and cyber criminals”.